The present invention relates to automated manufacturing and, in particular, relates to a sorter that places empty flatpack carriers into identified storage bins.
In the area of automated manufacturing of printed circuit boards many different components are placed on each board. One type of component is a so called flat pack which is an integrated circuit device in a low-profile package with external leads in the same plane as the package itself. The leads may extend from two or all from sides of the package. As received at the assembly plant, the flatpacks are stacked in reusable carriers. In the past, as these empty carriers were ejected from the robot assembly system, they fell into a container in a random fashion so that hand sorting is required to separate the different carriers. This is clearly a very tedious task and is not effective in a large production facility.
An electronic component sorting device is shown by U.S. Pat. No. 4,429,275 which is incorporated by reference. This device examines components having leads eminating in one direction, i.e., axial; after appropriate testing, each component is dropped into a chute that leads to a container having rotating bins. The container is rotated to place the appropriate bin under the chute in accordance with the testing results on that particular device.
Although this device operates to sort electronic components a device for sorting empty flatpack carriers in sought.